It’s June 13, 2009. The Minnesota Twins are getting ready to face the Chicago Cubs in the second game of a three-game series. Despite being at 32-32, the Twins are in the thick of the American League Central race and are looking to get on a run in order to challenge the Detroit Tigers.
At the front of the movement is their catcher, Joe Mauer. After returning from a back injury on May 1, he’s crushed the ball for a .408 average and 13 home runs, tying his career high. Already the owner of two American League batting championships, he’s on his way to winning the AL Most Valuable Player award and helping the Twins win their fifth division championship during the 2000s.
Five years later, Mauer has moved to first base and is getting ready to face the Detroit Tigers. This season has been the worst of his career, as he’s hit .263 with a pair of home runs in 58 games. The Twins have fallen on hard times as well. Since Mauer signed an eight-year, $184 million extension following the 2009 season, the Twins have had just one winning season.
Once considered the savior of the franchise, he has now become the scapegoat, and everybody wants to know — What exactly is happening to Joe Mauer?
The Twins will be quick to point out that Mauer has been through several injuries since signing his contract. As the most demanding position in the game, a catcher is going to have to fight his way through nicks and bruises, but Mauer developed a reputation for being soft after missing half of the 2011 season with bilateral leg weakness and a bout with pneumonia.
The team didn’t help matters when they moved Mauer to first base at the beginning of the season, but maybe it was time. His 920 games behind the plate ranks 140th in MLB history and makes his three batting championships more impressive when he likely wasn’t 100 percent.
His move to first base should prevented those bumps and bruises from occurring, but when Mauer missed five games earlier this season, Twins fans went bonkers with the thought that he was using vacation days. That might be enough for the team to hide any major injury that could be affecting his performance at the moment in order to prevent public backlash.
Perhaps that backlash has gotten in Mauer’s head.
When Mauer wrapped up his gaudy MVP performance, Twins fans were threatening to riot at Target Field if he wasn’t signed to a contract extension. Once the terms of the deal were announced, they threatened to riot because they gave him too much money.
Even his 2013 season (with a .324 average and eleven home runs) didn’t meet the expectations of Twins fans. Never mind the fact that his OPS of .880 would have ranked sixth among first basemen, he’s the reason the Twins can’t score runs.
Maybe the realization that nothing will be good enough to please the fans is enough for Mauer to over-think and try to do things that he hasn’t done in the past. But maybe he’s also seeing teams take a different approach.
A defensive shift has been created to try and take away Mauer’s real source of power: The Double. By leaning the opposite way, he has just eight doubles on the season. That’s compared to 35 in 2013.
It’s a drop off that make some think that he’s on the decline, but Baseball Prospectus’ spray chart shows that there are plenty of line drives that are finding gloves.
If Mauer were to pull the ball more, he could probably beat the shift. However, there’s that fine line of trying too hard to pull the ball. If he goes up trying to pull for power all the time, would that make things worse? It’s hard to tell.
Ultimately, it’s on Mauer and the Twins to find a way to make this work once again. Whether they like it or not, he’ll be on the team through the 2018 season making $23 million per year.
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Chris Schad contributes to 105 The Ticket and has had his work featured on the Bleacher Report and Yahoo Contributor Network. He serves as the Vikings Lead Writerfor Pro Football Spot. Find him on Twitter @crishad. |